Typical optical transmission systems use single mode (SM) optical fibers for transmission of optical signals, and optical amplifiers that utilize single mode rare earth doped fibers to amplify the transmitted signal. However, the explosive growth in the volume and variety of multi-media telecommunication applications continues to drive speed demands for internet traffic and motivate research in backbone fiber-optic communication links. Mode division multiplexing (MDM) is an attractive approach to increase optical fiber transmission capacity. In MDM, an optical fiber supporting a few modes is used where each mode carries an independent information channel. In this way, the information capacity is increased by a factor of X, where X is the number of modes in the fiber. However, in order to achieve MDM over long-haul distances, erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFA) are required. Current EDFAs are designed for single mode fiber transmissions. When single mode EDFAs are used for MDM systems, the modes from an input few mode transmission fiber need to be de-multiplexed first. Then each mode is amplified separately by a single mode EDFA. After amplification, the output single mode signals from amplifiers need to be multiplexed back to the modes in an output few mode transmission fiber. This process is complex and not cost effective.